14 Apr Meet YouNow: Another Addition to a Parents’ Growing List of Concerns

JUAN SAYS: In the wonderful age of technology, teenagers, who are not yet in their right minds to make proper decisions no matter how responsible they are or how well they were raised, will definitely fall into the trap of over sharing. The internet is brimming with ways to become an instant celebrity. Likes, shares, and how you doing can instantly make an insecure teenager instantly feel loved. Enter Meet YouNow, a largely growing app for teenagers who basically want to broadcast their entire lives to the world.

“It sounds like a public-access cable television station from hell. But it’s actually YouNow, a “live-casting” personal broadcasting service that threatens to displace Snapchat as the app most likely to keep parents awake at night.”

It’s basically letting strangers inside the privacy of your home as you do “normal” stuff: playing the guitar, doing homework, and everything else. It’s a stark reminder of Peyton Sawyer’s Web Podcast on One Tree Hill that led to one psycho killer, but that’s beside the point.

“If you haven’t heard of YouNow, you’re probably old. Each month, some 4 million members create and watch more than 100 million webcasts, as other YouNow fans communicate with them via live chat. But more than a third are between the ages of 13 and 18, and another 40 percent are in their early 20s. Much of this activity happens late at night, on phones or laptops, under the noses of their oblivious parents.”

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So parents, it’s up to you to decide. Is this another thing that will keep you up at night?